East India Company: list of goods ordered

1734

Intro

This is a page from a collection of documents from the British Library’s India Office, listing the various teas and silk textiles that were ordered in 1734 at Canton for the ships Wyndham and Compton. Many of these commodities had obscure names: types of tea included Bing, Congoe and Queen and silk products included taffatyns, gorgoroons and goosees. By the early 18th century, the East India Company was trading regularly with the Chinese from Canton, buying mainly tea, silk textiles and inexpensive porcelain, in exchange for silver. Over the next 100 years tea became a very popular drink in England, and there was a fear that too much silver was leaving the country to pay for it. To stop this happening, the company became involved in a triangular trade by smuggling the drug opium from India into China. They were paid in silver for opium and used this to buy tea. This was a dangerous exercise as opium was banned in China.